As a snail who melts, let every one of them pass away: like the untimely birth of a woman, that they may not see the sun.
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Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
12. "Like wax melted they shall be taken away" (ver. 8). For thou wast about to say, all men are not so made weak, like myself, in order that they may believe: many men do persevere in their evil, and in their malice. And of the same fear thou nothing: "Like wax melted they shall be taken away." Against thee they shall not stand, they shall not continue: with a sort of fire of their own lusts they shall perish. For there is here a kind of hidden punishment, of it the Psalm is about to speak now, to the end of it. There are but a few verses; be attentive. There is a certain punishment future, fire of hell, fire everlasting. For future punishment hath two kinds: either of the lower places it is, where was burning that rich man, who was wishing for himself a drop of water to be dropped on his tongue off the finger of the poor man, whom before his gate he had spurned, when he saith, "For I am tormented in this flame." And the second is that at the end, whereof they are to hear, that on the...
Wax. Hebrew shabbelul, occurs no where else, and this signification is surely preferable to that of the Rabbins, "a snail. "(Protestants) (Haydock)
Fire. Hebrew, "like the untimely birth of a woman, which has not seen the sun. "(Houbigant after St. Jerome)
Septuagint may not have read th at the end of esh, "fire. "But both version imply, that the wicked shall perish, without resource (Berthier) or struggle. This in enforced by a multiplicity of examples. (Haydock)
